The council planning department’s feeble case over the Heath Clark playing fields in Waddon has been thrown out by an unimpressed Planning Inspector, who ruled in favour of David Sullivan’s property company.
By BARRATT HOLMES, housing correspondent
Porn to be wild: David Sullivan, one of the directors of the Conegate property empire
One of the country’s most high-profile businessmen, David Sullivan, the billionaire former pornographer behind Sunday Sport and West Ham United, has managed to get the Planning Inspector onside to allow him to make even more dosh, this time by concreting over some former school football pitches in Waddon.
The case brought by Sullivan’s property company, Conegate, drew a withering condemnation of the half-baked case prepared by Croydon Council’s planners, who wanted to leave the land to be used for a school at some unspecified point in the future. “I found little detailed evidence from the council supporting the need for this site,” the Planning Inspector said in a damning ruling against the council.
By the end of the case, it was as if the ex-porn baron’s advisers had stripped Croydon planners naked, leaving them with nothing to cover their modesty. The Inspector’s decision reveals a planning department so broken that it can not make even the most basic case to defend its own Croydon Plan.
And the borough’s anti-development Mayor, part-time Jason Perry, who pledged before his election to safeguard the borough’s precious open spaces, has done nothing to retrieve another disaster at the hands of his council’s planning department.
The loss to development of the final part of the Heath Clark playing fields ought to be a major embarrassment for Croydon’s Tories – the site, off Duppas Hill, near Waddon Station, is in Conservative MP Chris Philp’s constituency – and also to the Labour councillors who helped to create the council’s “all but broken” planning department.
Concreting over Croydon: the Heath Clark playing fields have been neglected for decades
Under planning director Heather Cheesbrough, the council had reserved part of the old playing fields for a secondary school, supposedly to meet demand expected in the 2030s from families living in a revived Croydon town centre, when it is expected to have 17,000 new homes, with another 7,470 homes to be built along the Purley Way.
After the Heath Clark school closed in the 1980s, 163 homes were built on part of the site, what is now Old School Place. The remainder of the field has been left neglected, with no effort by the council to acquire it in order to extend the neighbouring Duppas Hill Park. For the last decade or more the field, lined by some mature trees, has been left as grazing for horses.
On another parcel of the playing field land the Hyde Group is already building 126 private and social housing units, in line with the Croydon Plan, a scheme which was granted permission by the council in 2020, much reducing the space for any new school.
The ruling from the Planning Inspector earlier this month means that the Croydon Plan has been overturned in the latest devastating blow to the credibility of Cheesbrough and her floundering council planning department.
Sullivan’s company, Conegate Ltd, had taken the case to the planning inspector on the basis of “non-determination”, after they lost patience with Croydon’s dysfunctional planning department, which had been sitting on the application for a year.
Permission has now been given for 140 homes along with a community centre – 23 homes for shared ownership and 34 for rental at “affordable” rents are part of the scheme. The homes could be worth more than £40million at current housing market prices once placed on the market.
Community centre: the Conegate scheme, unlike many, includes homes for ‘affordable’ rent and a neighbourhood centre
Conegate won out after doing their homework on Croydon’s costly school place planning.
The ruling reflects very badly on the regime under Labour’s Paul Scott, when expansion plans for Croydon schools were based on the Westfield-driven development boom that never happened. As Inside Croydon has been reporting since 2014, huge amounts of spending on unneeded new schools was wasted under Labour.
Independent inspectors are usually very cautious in the tone that they employ in giving their rulings. But Jonathan Price BA(Hons) DipTP MRTPI DMS was dismissive of Croydon’s planners’ level of effort at the appeal, as he gave the green light for Sullivan’s development company to send in its bulldozers.
Even before the hearing started, the council’s case for opposing the development had all but collapsed, with the planners meekly conceding all of its points except one, and started negotiating the financial terms that go with a successful appeal.
The issue left to be contested was the council’s claimed need for school places – this in a borough where two state secondaries have been forced to close in the last four years due to falling pupil numbers.
“The council’s case that this site might be needed seems somewhat unsubstantiated and lacking in the underpinning evidence to demonstrate that planned housing growth requires that a secondary school allocation is retained on Heath Clark North,” Price wrote, dismissively.
Conegate had dismantled the council’s case. “There is around 19per cent spare capacity spread amongst the borough’s state secondary schools,” the inspector wrote. “The council’s own forecasts show this to increase further from 5,238 places to 5,607 places by 2027-2028.”
When he joined the council in 2014 as a Labour councillor for Waddon, Andrew Pelling warned of the dangers of overestimating demand for school places. He tells Inside Croydon that he was warned at the time by Tony Newman’s Labour group not to express such concerns. Pelling was removed earlier this year as a Labour candidate for the council elections after a period of whistle-blowing about council governance.
In 2017, Pelling’s fellow Waddon Labour councillor Robert Canning expressed his own concern about the over-building of schools. Canning was also threatened with disciplinary action for expressing views. Canning chose not to run in May’s elections.
It is five years since Alisa Flemming, the then Labour cabinet member for education and children’s services, boasted that, “It’s fantastic to be able to announce that by 2020 more than 6,000 extra children will be able to be taught at local schools. Our population is growing fast, and I’m delighted to be able to reassure parents that they will not have to worry about whether their children will be able to get into a local school.”
Wasted millions: when Paul Scott was in charge, the council created 5,000 excess secondary school places, and some very happy architects
By 2022, just 762 of those 6,000 extra school places of which Flemming boasted are actually filled.
Scott had his fingerprints all over the loss of Green Belt land, used to build one of the new schools, Coombe Wood, the Folio Trust secondary school on Coombe Road. The £30million school was designed with all the lacklustre charm of an American High School on the local freeway, fed by a huge car park out front and housed in crass, huge hangar-style buildings. At the time, Inside Croydon reported that there were already 5,000 excess secondary places in Croydon.
The competition for pupils provided by Coombe Wood played a big part in bringing about the closure of the Church of England St Andrew’s School.
This now-vacant school just up the hill was included in the Planning Inspector’s deliberations over the Heath Clark fields. “The St Andrew’s site is quite small, but larger than the appeal site and the council already owns the playing fields.
“There might be constraints in bringing forward a mainstream school here, including the terms of the lease to the current occupier. However, given that this site is already in educational use, which the Diocese wishes to maintain, such constraints seem to me to be significantly less than those involved in bringing forward a school at Heath Clark North.”
The Inspector thought the Heath Clark site to be too small for a secondary school. “I consider that the roughly 1.9 hectares that remain significantly limits the offer Heath Clark North can make in contributing to Croydon’s future secondary education needs.
“There would likely be a reliance on using part of the Duppas Hill Recreation Ground for school sports fields, and the allocation makes no reference to this. Looking at the arguments, acknowledging some advantage of adjacency to the Recreation Ground, I consider the relatively small size of this appeal site constrains its role in meeting future secondary education needs. This factor would further diminish the likelihood of finding a school user for this allocation.”
Among the risible arguments put forward by Croydon Council’s planners, they suggested that the war in Ukraine, the downturn in the economy, possible increased demand after 2027, plans for new homes on Purley Way and the long failed attempts to tempt Croydon parents away from sending their children to grammar schools in Sutton and Bromley, were all reasons for keeping the Heath Clark land for a school.
Embarrassment: planning director Heather Cheesbrough
The Inspector said the council’s case was “not persuasive”, and that he saw little chance of the land ever being needed for a school.
“On the balance of probabilities, having considered the evidence provided, I consider there to be no reasonable prospect of Heath Clark North coming forward for the secondary school use…
“The council cites the current situation in the Ukraine, and the migrant influx associated with that particular crisis. The evidence is that in recent years long-term international migration has been the main reason for the borough’s population growth.
“However, as the appellant has shown, this has been more than compensated for by out-migration from Croydon to elsewhere in the UK. Net migration in Croydon is not shown to be a factor having a particular bearing upon the requirement for maintaining this secondary school allocation, or the likely prospect of it being taken up.”
Sullivan’s advisers had seen to it that Croydon’s planners had been caught with their pants down.
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How is Heather Cheesborough still working for the Council?
Waiting for a Negrini-style payout?
Her reputation is in tatters and for her own sake she should go.
A very sad aspect of this long running saga (the dereliction of the ex Heath Clark school playing fields) is that the site would have made a good site for a primary school–a site with fresh air for the children to breathe–a site with lost of green space for them to run around on–not a tarmac desert.
There was a decision some years back (recorded in Inside Croydon) to build a new Harris Primary School , about 3/4 of a mile to the SW, with a road frontage direct on to the Purley way. Presumably, there must have been a need for the new school, or it would not have been built.
The polluted air from the main road is borne on the prevailing SW wind from the road to wash across the school. The school has minimal outside play space– but that is presumably OK under any UK government guidelines ???
I am not sure about whether the scool has air cleaners to filter out the plooutants, but why should a school be located in an intrinsically “poor air quality site”, when the Heath Clark playing fields site was languishing unused for something like 2 decades?
Meanwhile, at the West end of the Duppas Hill flyover, there is or now–was– (as mentioned in the above IC article) the St Andrew’s C of E High School.
This was located right next to the polluted main road by the end of the flyover for decades.
There seems to be a theme here– schools built right next to main roads.
It seems very wrong that children are sentenced to either breathe polluted air through open windows, or breathe it when playing in the playgrounds located by the main roads– or have to breathe de-natured air filtered through Air-con machines.
Why not have schools in green sites with decent air?
Why was the Heath Clark playing field site –with its fresh, unpolluted air– not selected for the Harris primary school ?
OK, now the site is going to be redeveloped for housing, at least the new residents will enjoy fresh air. That must be good, but am I being old-fashioned in thinking that school children should be given decent amounts of green outdoor space, without breathing in the filth that our cars spew out as we drove past on the main roads?
I’m incredulous at this.
If Croydon Council is unable to defend its Refususals, it is a very bad day for planning in this borough.
There is something intrinsically fucked up in the Croydon Planning Department and it’s now damaging our borough.
The rot is at the top – everyone sees that – Heather Cheesbrough must be made to go.
Heather Cheesbrough is out of her depth.
She got the job via the now discredited Negrini. She never got the job on merit.
Jason Perry must act to protect Croydon and seek out a new Director of Planning.
Why are people having a go at Cheeseburger? It’s that pillock Paul Scott who instigated all this while playing at being the Mayor of Trumpton. He’s still a member of Labour, along with the three other members of the Gang of Four, his wife Butler and, despite the fig leaf of suspension, Hall and Newman.
You can add thirsty minion Chris Clark to that list – although he simply did Paul Scott’s bidding.
How much did the Scott and Butler household make from Croydon?
As for Cheeseburger, she had (and has) much more power as Director of Planning but chose to ride roughshod over residents. She has been an abject failure. God know how the employees of the planning division must feel.
That Cheeseburger is past its shelf-life.
Cheesbrough failed to deliver planning in Croydon. She’s paid to do this. She wrote SPD2 that fucked up planning in this borough – not Scott. She facilitated the fucking over of planning at Scotts behest.
Get her name right. ‘Cheeseburger’ is crass and rude.
Just another sad saga of a bad department with no credibility at all from Building control to planning to enforcement.
Continual reports of a litany of failures, excuses, non answers, alleged cover ups ,mis-representations of fact – alleged dissembling – perceived conflicts of interest – employee’s leaving to join developers and agents they have made decisions for have all led to the department bringing itself into disrepute and dragging the Council and then the Borough into disrepute also.
Irrespective of Ms Cheesbrough and Townsend – the department itself appears to have no credibility with the residents and not much with developers either despite all their purported assistance to those wishing to build perfectly legal developments.
Can this Planning Department and the previous Planning committee members including this Mayor justify it’s existence and how it provides any benefit at all to Croydon and it’s residents?
Planners get a lot of stick– most unjustified– but it is so clear that we need good planning, as a borough, and country. Planning is one of this country’s greatest 20th century acheivements– which includes the Green belts, National Parks, Areas of Outstanding natural beauty, and more. It has taken a lot to build this over-arching system – and it is sadly too easy for the legacy to be trashed.
In our area, without Planning, we would have seen a tide of suburbia, of varying degrees of ugliness washed across most of E Surrey and adjacent NW Kent.
Bad development is for ever…well, a long time. Whether in town or country.
Looking at contemporary Croydon, a lot of the redevelopment around the borough is of good quality, but the over-large blocks filling up plots need to be cut down to size, so that enough space is left in front and to the sides for enough greening–grass, hedges, shrubs, trees– to be designed in, to avoid the “body builder standing on a postage stamp” developments and the “quart in a pint pot” developments we see on some sites.
My hope for 2023, re local planning, are twofold.
1- the right of redevelopment action to fill the void that is central Croydon.
2- s a sensible revision of suburban redevelopment policy.
It is obvious, in spite of what many nimbyites think, that there are many areas and plots around the borough that really need to be redeveloped and renewed. Whether these are small buildings on large plots, or areas of housing that are well past their sell-by date, the need exists to improve housing stock and add more homes of all sizes.
It would be good if the local communities could be involved more, in a serious way, not a lip-service type of way, in looking at the redevelopment options, but, a key question is whether the community and local community leaders such as Resident Associations have the maturity to really do more than just oppose everything?
Some do have the necessary vision to see beyond the personal situation.
Others seem to lack it.
It would help if the Neighbourhood Forums set up some decades ago and abolished around a decade ago could be re-constituted.
None of the stick that the planners have received in this borough has ever been unjustified, Lewis.